1897 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Canada

 * Jean Blewett, Heart Songs
 * Bliss Carman, Ballads of Lost Haven: A Book of the Sea, Canadian author published in the United States
 * William Henry Drummond, The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems, employing dialect
 * Frederick George Scott, The Unnamed Lake and Other Poems

United Kingdom

 * Alfred Austin, The Conversion of Winkelmann, and Other Poems
 * Hilaire Belloc, More Beasts (for Worse Children) (see The Bad Child's Book of Beasts 1896)
 * Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, publishing under the pen name "Anodos", Fancy's guerdon (see also Fancy's Following 1896)
 * John Davidson, New Ballads
 * Ernest Dowson, The Pierrot of the Minute: A dramatic phantasy
 * Lionel Johnson, Ireland, with Other Poems
 * Henry Newbolt, Admirals All, and Other Verses, including "Vitaï Lampada", and "Drake's Drum" (first published in the St. John's Gazette 1896)
 * George William Russell, publishing under the pen name "Æ", The Earth Breath, and Other Poems
 * Dora Sigerson, The Fairy Changeling, and Other Poems
 * Arthur Symons, Amoris Victima
 * Francis Thompson, New Poems
 * Theodore Watts-Dunton, The Coming of Love

United States

 * Richard Maurice Burke, Walt Whitman: Man and Poet, nonfiction
 * Bliss Carman, Ballads of Lost Haven: A Book of the Sea, Canadian author published in the United States
 * James Whitcomb Riley, Neighborly Poems
 * Edwin Arlington Robinson, The Children of the Night, including "Reuben Bright"
 * John B. Tabb, Lyrics
 * Yone Noguchi, Seen and Unseen, or, Monologues of a Homeless Snail and The Voice of the Valley

Other in English

 * Barcroft Boake (suicide 1892), Where the Dead Men Lie, and Other Poems, Australia
 * John Le Gay Brereton, Sweetheart Mine: Lyrics of Love and Friendship, Australia
 * G. Sigerson, editor and translator from Gaelic, Bards of Gael and Gall, Ireland
 * Isaac Tambyah, editor, A Garland of Ceylon Verse 1837-1897, Colombo: Ceylon Printing Works, 132 pages; anthology; Indian poetry in English

France

 * Francis Jammes, La Naissance du poète ("The Birth of the Poet")
 * Stéphane Mallarmé:
 * Divagations
 * Un Coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard ("A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance") is published in Cosmopolis magazine (not published in book form until 1914)
 * Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, a verse drama

Other languages

 * Stefan George, Das Jahr der Seele ("The Year of the Soul"); German

Births

 * August 11 – Louise Bogan (died 1970), American poet and critic; wife of Raymond Holden
 * May 5 – Kenneth Burke (died 1993), major American literary theorist and philosopher
 * October 10 – Shigeji Tsuboi 壺井繁治 (died 1975), Japanese poet (surname: Tsuboi)
 * November 7 – Ruth Pitter (died 1992), English poet and decorative painter (born Emma Thomas Pitter)
 * November 11 – Nima Yooshij (died 1960), Persian poet
 * November 15 – Sir Sacheverell Sitwell (died 1988), English writer, best known as an art critic and writer on architecture, particularly the baroque; younger brother of Dame Edith Sitwell and Sir Osbert Sitwell
 * John Ferrar Holms (died 1934), British critic

Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
 * May 4 &mdash; Isabella Banks (born 1821), English poet and novelist
 * July 20 &mdash; Jean Ingelow (born 1829), English poet and novelist
 * September 14 &mdash; James Joseph Sylvester (born 1814), English mathematician who translated poetry from the original French, German, Italian, Latin and Greek; author of The Laws of Verse, in which he attempted to codify a set of laws for prosody in poetry
 * December 22 – William Gay (born 1865), Scots-born Australian poet
 * date not known – Velutteri Keshavan Vaidyar (born 1839), Indian, Malayalam-language poet